Software AG sees a big opportunity brewing in the Industrial Internet, and on Monday it introduced Terracotta Universal Messaging as a data transport designed to power a broad range of high-speed, big data applications.

Messaging systems have traditionally solved the problem of fanning out data from a small number of systems that generate information and delivering it to the many applications that draw on that data. Big data and promising developments such as the Industrial Internet promise to turn that model on its head.

"When you have potentially thousands of sensors, devices and systems creating data, you have the problem of fanning data in to a central system for analysis and storage," said Eddie McDaid, managing director of Universal Messaging at Software AG's Terracotta business unit, in an interview with InformationWeek.

Terracotta Universal Messaging is high-capacity, real-time data-streaming transport, and it supports a range of languages, clients and protocols for a range of applications, devices and data types so it can live up to its "Universal" name. As for the centralized storage, that component is Terracotta BigMemory, the in-memory grid database Software AG acquired in 2011.

"With the combination of stream processing and the in-memory data grid, you move from data analytics to what we call decision analytics," said Ivo Totev, CMO of Software AG, in an interview with InformationWeek.

The Industrial Internet promises to create plenty of near-real-time applications, such as preventative maintenance applications, but there are also plenty of use cases in the here and now. PayPal, for example, uses Terracotta BigMemory to detect fraudulent transactions as they're being conducted. With decision analytics, PayPal can decide in real time whether to approve a transaction or not.

Other applications that are prevalent today include recommendation scenarios in which retailers want to suggest related or complementary purchases either through e-commerce sites or on tablets in the hands of point-of-sale employees. Oil and gas exploration firms need to monitor and quickly react to changes in well-sensor data. And in the financial services industry, banks need to constantly monitor transactions and gain a real-time understanding of their risk positions.

Software AG's big data portfolio extends beyond Terracotta Universal Messaging and Terracota BigMemory. The company also owns the WebMethods data integration and business process automation suite, and it also just acquired the Apama complex event processing engine to address the most demanding high-scale, low-latency demands as supported by that product on financial trading floors and national intelligence agencies.

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